Virtual ecology creates game worlds strangely similar to ours

Deer, bison and prunes cross the plains in large herds … scavengers quickly sniff carrion, sockeye jump upstream, wolves attack in groups around their prey, geese fly in fixed formations, possums play dead , rodents fall in the trees, wolves, grizzlies charge when it is threatened and birds of prey fly to the thermals.

It may sound like a story about Canada's wilderness, but it's actually the way Rockstar recently promoted Red Dead Redemption 2, its critically acclaimed game, that takes players into an immersive, immersive Wild West. .

Red Dead Redemption 2 brings together more than 200 animal species in various habitats. Its unprecedented success suggests that authentic natural environments imitating the ecology of the real world will become the pillar of future titles.

Video games have taken on a magnitude and complexity such that such complex virtual ecosystems are now possible, flora and fauna living and behaving in these virtual worlds as in ours.

By 2018, the global gaming industry was estimated at around 100 billion pounds sterling. To put this into perspective, it is 1.5 times larger than the film industry and five times larger than the music industry, with one in three people on the planet being a gambler. Not bad for an industry that is only about 50 years old.

In addition to the enormous financial success of modern games, there is the ever-growing size of "open world games", in which players are free to explore vast and interactive virtual worlds.

These virtual environments have evolved from simple monoblock representations of landscapes to dynamic and interactive ecosystems. They have plants that can be foraged and a variety of wild animals that demonstrate complex behavior driven by AI, interacting with the player and others.

Virtual ecosystems

Within Red Dead Redemption 2, top predators such as alligators are patiently hiding underwater, any element (including other animals) of the game that adventure too close to the edge of the game. water quickly meets failure. Deer will also respond to invisible predators, alerting the player of cougars hidden in the nearby grass.

Horses, one of the game's most important animals, also react to other wildlife – catching a bear or hidden rattlesnake – thus demonstrating authentic animal intelligence.

Horizon Zero Dawn, the open world role-playing game from Guerrilla Games, features machines and organic "animals". In particular, animal-machines exhibit behaviors that are not based primarily on player interaction. "Corrupt" machines often attack their uncorrupt counterparts, with the player often encountering dead machine bodies, alluding to a dynamic world that does not attract the player's attention.

The bodies of fallen machine animals, as in any real ecosystem, are not wasted. If they are not engaged in fighting or roaming territories, "scrappers" (hyena-like machines) and "hawk-rasants" (gigantic vulture-type machines) will consume the animal-machines that they have detected, detected nearby – thus reproducing the decomposition and nutrient cycling.

Nintendo's open world game, Zelda: The Breath of Nature, uses the "virtual food search" needed to progress in the game. However, just like in the real world, players also need to be careful because wildlife and flora can be easily overexploited, forcing the player to wait for stocks to recover.

All this is all the more impressive as everything has been accomplished in a generation. Video games as a medium are relative newcomers – the industry only emerged in the 1970s. After the same amount of time, the movies were still black and white. We can only wonder what players will play in ten, 20 or even 50 years.

The future of games

Ecosystems in games are becoming more dynamic and "inhabited", which opens up the potential of education. Anna Groves, an ecologist and American player explained:

A child who likes to light fires in the hyrulian meadows could get excited about the ecology of grassland restoration when he finds out that it involves fires in real grasslands.

As games increasingly use ecology as a core feature of the game, its value and relevance as an area will inevitably grow – exposing children to an academic subject in an accessible and enjoyable way.

Video games offer unprecedented creative freedom to explore topics such as ecology. Designers can create environments filled with long-extinct species or pristine ecosystems that restore the appearance of nature before human intervention. Children can "play" with imaginary scenarios of the natural world in an intuitive, immersive and fun way, far surpassing what is possible in traditional educational approaches.

As a result, they can gain a deeper understanding of what natural states are possible through conservation than even a student involved in exhausted ecosystems in the real world.

With the advent of virtual ecology, video games are increasingly functioning as "conduits" to other disciplines. Landscape architecture and psychology are increasingly used in the design of contemporary games. In the future, disciplines such as engineering, geology and even medicine could begin to inform the next generation of games.

When designing the worlds in which we play, future game designers could be increasingly educated to the "traditional" elements of landscaping, including ecology and architecture. With this, people from different fields also have the opportunity to collaborate to shape the world of future video games, thus radically transforming the two professions.